<William> After Jaipur we moved onto the 'blue city' of Jodphur. It's a stunning place to look at - the 500 year old houses are all painted blue, traditionally because the indigo dye was good at killing termites and repelling mosquitos. Rising out the middle of the blue city is the fort made from red sandstone, with amazingly intricate carvings made into the stone. It's all quite a sight at sunset when it's bathed in an orange glow!

View of the fort from the hills

The fort with the blue city below

After that we headed south to Udaipur, the town which has the famous 'floating palaces' (not actually floating, but just built in the middle of a lake) where much of Octopussy was filmed. It was a great place to be as it's low season there at the moment and we stayed in a really nice hotel for a quarter of their normal price.

Whilst in Udaipur we lived the 5-star lifestyle, visiting some of the most expensive hotels that had been converted from royal palaces. One afternoon we went for the traditional english afternoon tea complete with scones and (artificial) cream. The room had the biggest chandeliers I've ever seen and the walls were dotted with black & white photos of Brits on hunting parties with one leg on a dead tiger and a shotgun slung over one arm. Another day we spent the entire day sitting by the most ornate swimming pool in town, at another 5 star hotel. The pool was made from white marble with beautiful carvings all around, and was used for one of the scenes in Octopussy too. We were the only people there all day and we had about 5 turbaned guys standing around waiting for us to click our fingers and order our next drink!!

The 'floating' palaces of Udaipur (not floating any more as the lake levels are too low!)

After Udaipur the plan was to head south to Bangalore to meet up with some of the people I used to work with. We booked our tickets about a week in advance but the train was full so we had to go on a waiting list (which had been fine for previous journeys). However, this time our luck was out and the train was full - there was absolutely no way to get on. We spent about 4 or 5 hours in the booking office trying to work out another way to make it down south, but it seemed that every single train out for the next 2 or 3 days was completely booked up. In fact it later transpired (after even longer trying to book tickets) that every single train in every direction was booked up, so we ended up taking an overnight bus. We could well understand why there was such a rush to get out of the city though - the place seemed like a complete hell hole - more flies than I had ever seen in my life and choking fumes from the traffic congesting the streets. Later on when we got the bus out I think we saw the 'real' Ahmedabad which actually looked quite nice, it was just that we were stuck in the train station all day!

We had to change our route and it seemed like the best option would be to backtrack through Rajasthan and visit Jaisalmer, the desert city, right near the border with Pakistan. The bus ride out goes through about 200km of baking hot barren desert with the occasional hut or shepards hideout, then suddenly you turn a corner and the giant imposing sandstone fort rises out of the desert in the distance.

The desert fort of Jaisalmer

We've just got back from a camel trek in the Thar desert. We found out pretty quickly why no-one lives in the desert - it's a pretty inhospitable place. Gale force blustering winds whipped up a sandstorm throughout the day which meant that sand got everywhere - in our eyes, sticking to our suncream covered skin,and worst of all into our cameras. My camera is now completely ruined (motor jammed up with sand) and possibly also the film that was in it which had all of my shots of North India. Maz's camera is also sounding a bit grindy, and has sand all inside the lens.

Maz on her camel

The view from my camel

Apart from that there were a few highlights to the trip- we made it acros the barren dusty landscape to some amazing peachy-coloured sand dunes which look exactly how you'd expect a desert to look! It was a weird scene, as it was about hours before sunset and the sun was getting low, but there was so much dust and sand in the air that it was getting quite dark and the sun looked more like a pale moon.

Hygeine conditions weren't too great on the trek so we're currently waiting to see if we're going to get ill. This morning, after breakfast the guides washed up the pots & plates in dirt they'd just been spitting in. After that they put them into a bag which was once yellow but was so dirty it was grey. Then, to add insult to injury a dog wandered up, cocked it's leg and peed all over the bag & the pots! At lunchtime we just buried our dinner in the sand when they weren't looking!
</William> <!--7:22 AM-->